~Feenlend

[Tom Zurinskas]

One thing ~thheeng we were talking about is the sound of letter "i" in words like "sing, wing, thing".

I don't know why, but linguists ~leengwists express this sound as short i when its really spoken as long e ~ee in English.  My theory is that latin pronunciation has the letter i pronounced as ~ee so folks are just letting it slide phonetically.  Latins say ~Geev eet tue heem~ instead of "give it to him."  So they have no problem with using letter i for "sing,wing,thing" because it means for them ~seeng,weeng,thheeng~ the way they say it.

A new one in this respect is the word "Finland".  I heard the Prime Minister of Finland pronounce it ~Feenlend, and he ought to know it correctly.  So I suppose the Fins are ~Feenz, and Finnish is ~Feenish (it shouldn't have the double "n" in that case because the "i" is short thus Finish would be more correct.)

I once heard a Lithuanian pronounce it ~Leethhwwaenyu.  Again the letter "i" spoken as ~ee.  My thing is that if it's spoken as ~ee in ~Eenglish then it should be phonetically written as ~ee.


Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
See truespel.com - and the 4 truespel books plus "Occasional Poems" at authorhouse.com.


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